Interactions between languages in verb- and pronoun-agreement in bilingual sentence production

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This thesis investigates how fluent bilinguals make use of the grammar of their two languages when
they construct verb- and pronoun-agreement only in one language (monolingual mode) or in both their
languages (bilingual mode). We are particularly interested in the impact of the non-response language in
sentence processing on the response language. Bilingual research has provided evidence for language
integration in bilingual speech (e.g., Hartsuiker, Pickering, & Veltkamp, 2004) which is also consistent
with the phenomenon of code-switching whereby speakers can use elements of each language in
producing mixed-language utterances (e.g., Myers-Scotton, 2002). So far, studies at the lexical level have
provided support for parallel language activation (e.g., Colomé, 2001), yet the issue of whether activation
of either language can be strong enough to influence the workings of the other is still in dispute (e.g.,
Hermans, Bongaerts, de Bot, & Schreuder, 1998, but see Costa, La Heij, & Navarrete, 2006).
In three separate sections of the thesis we employ a sentence-completion paradigm widely used in
monolingual agreement literature (Bock & Miller, 1991) to examine language interaction effects in the
monolingual and the bilingual modes of speech (Grosjean, 2000). English-Greek and Greek-English
fluent bilinguals produced completions to singular or plural subjects when the number of the translation
was either the same or different, and when their completion either did or did not switch languages. The
first section investigates whether there is influence of the divergent number properties of the nonresponse
native language (L1) on verb-agreement in the response second language (L2). The results of
Greek-English bilinguals show influence of the underlying number of the L1 on completions in the L2.
We interpret this in terms of a markedness account (e.g., Eberhard, 1997) whereby parallel activation and
competition between an L2 singular subject noun and its L1 plural translation results in plural verbagreement
because the singular form is more vulnerable to the marked plural form. English-Greek
bilinguals who perform on the same monolingual mode do not show influence of their L1 when speaking
in the L2 (Greek). We attribute this finding to a difference of morphological/inflectional properties
between the two languages which renders a language that displays fewer overt markings (English) easier
to control when utterances are produced in a language that displays more overt markings (Greek) (e.g.,
Vigliocco, Butterworth, & Semenza, 1995).